Like with all startups that reach a certain maturity, the organization was in a state of flux towards a more established product and design led discovery process. As we rode this wave of changes, I found myself in a place where I started to see a need for the broader team to understand how exactly user research feeds into design decisions, and the weight of tradeoffs made during development.

Naturally, this is a constant part of our work as UX professionals, to explain the usefulness of user-centric thinking. I had been tackling these tradeoff conversations one-on-one, case-by-case basis. As a newer member of the team entering a complex cog of an existing product, I took my time to observe, listen, and acclimate to how the team processed and held conversations around design.

It was at this point that I felt that we were at a good point to discuss user empathy with the broader group. I enlisted the help of some designers, and got to work on designing a workshop.

Objective

There were 3 main things I wanted to achieve with this presentation:

1. Achieve a baseline understanding of what user empathy can look like.
2. Show a Simon applicable example of a problem to be solved, and how I would define the scope of research.
3. Have the audience apply the concepts on their own

Given these points, I thought a workshop format with breakout rooms would work well.

Setting the scene

Another designer and I set the (sort of literally) stage with a silly skit where we discuss how a conversation could progress based on asking the right questions.

Here, the core intent of this ask is "going to Magnolia's this weekend", not the banana pudding. We presented the two directions this conversation could go based on J's answer of "I hate banana pudding!"

1. H reacts strongly to not liking the banana pudding -> The "going to Magnolia's" is called off.
2. H asks why J does not like banana pudding -> J divulges more information about pudding at Magnolia's, they make plans.

We got some laughs- nothing like comedy to bring people together! This segued into the more "legitimate" example below.

Concrete example

I then walked the group through how I might break down a product problem. This was a real prompt that another designer had approached in the past, and we were able to use it to anchor the conversation around how this directly affects the team.

The workshop

I presented the group with another prompt that I thought they could relate to without having a lot of previous experience. I encouraged the team to brainstorm and write down their assumptions, and use that as a jumping off point to write their questions.

I then broke out the group into teams of 4-5 people, and set them to work.

After the breakout rooms, I got a volunteer from the crowd to role play a user interview session, where they asked the questions their breakout group came up with. I acted as the user, and people left comments in the Zoom chat as we interacted.

We then discussed as a group what some possible solutions could be, based on what we learned.

After the workshop

It would be pretty naive of me to think one presentation would move the needle. This was also not a comprehensive or perfect material by no means. There was still a lot of process shaping work the design team had planned to do. But this workshop did help to start some conversations going.

I got some very kind comments afterwards- and what I found the most rewarding was the desire for people to continue the conversation. I found the team starting to ask to be more involved or made aware of the research that I did, and design reviews with engineers took on an extra layer of user-centric thinking that I didn't see before.

You can see the full presentation slide deck here.